Oh dear me… It’s not only because Guyana’s four major newspapers now feature about a “hundred” columnists, analysts and commentators that makes me unsure, intimidated sometimes, of what new issue to confront. Because the issues are often not originally “new”. It’s how one should deal with them.
Also, because this forum has granted me the privilege to share, provoke views I’m cautious about being frequently repetitive.
But oh dear me, the issues won’t go away. It’s as if they demand repetition! So today I am going to be guilty of repetition. For good, unfortunate reason! (I leave the 2013 Budget, the law, the constitution and Parliament’s Standing Orders to the others today, as I share sensitive questions and yet more condolences.)
Gunshots Ring Out, Bullets Fly
First today’s repetition: it was a mere fourteen days ago, in this column, that I penned a piece captioned “National security strategy vs personal safety.” In that offering I made my usual appeal for all Police Stations and Outposts to be adequately manned and equipped. I urged the type of computer profiling of communities which would make good, honest lawmen know instantly every nook and cranny of areas in their division. I then listed all the various “strategies”, reports and recommendations which, though quite welcome, do little to guarantee the personal safety of vulnerable citizens, in towns and villages.
Second, Alas, I never guessed that just nine days after that piece a heinous murder by gun would happen just a few hundred yards from where I stood!
Yes, I was getting accustomed to another episode of our everlasting national disgrace – a blackout- when the relative silence was pierced by three gunshots. On Sunday near midnight, an immediate neighbour, businessman and dominoes organizer was summarily gunned down. In the GPL darkness another life was snuffed out by bullets. I care not the reason. There can’t be any cause, measured by our old time morality, for robbers to take life, during their act(s).
Okay, I am aware that there is such a “right” as lawful killing. That’s when you are defending your home, family or self from savage intruders bent on violence.
Then, as a soldier, you kill in defence of country. But we are talking daily gun crimes here. What is to be done? All I can offer is more repetition.
Guns forever? No solution?
Frankly Speaking, I am fascinated by the wholly American scenario now playing out in the US Senate, Congress, State Governments and its society as a whole.
As guns kill children at schools,” traditional” Americans cling tenaciously to their constitutional right to “bear arms.” The framers of the American Constitution wanted the pioneering farmers and property owners to be in a position to defend what was theirs. Those early statesmen did not envisage powerful assault weapons in crazy hands. Oh, but some Americans and their “rights”!
Way back in Georgetown this is what I offered, in parts, three years ago.
You and I
You and I have read and heard in editorials, police statements and conferences even from the knowledgeable Home Affairs Minister. Hundreds of small arms weaponry enter Guyana through porous borders from our three continental neighbours. This “intelligence” is both anecdotal and evidentiary, especially with regard to weapons-manufacturer Brazil and Corentyne-friendly Suriname whose gun-runners and other bandits seem to have strong effective alliances with Guyanese law-breakers. Other theories, sometimes evidence, point to ways and means guns are smuggled or merely brought into Guyana.
My enduring question, therefore, is: is our protective forces really incapable of mounting sustained continuous strategies to stem the supply and use of illegal small arms in this small society of ours? Just how much police work is needed? And how can the police get community co-operation – even from crooks – to even lessen gun crimes? Frankly speaking, I’ve never seen or heard of any special intensive anti-gun programme ever executed by our police force. So since I’m not police not professional criminologist or not intelligence special branch, I can only share, as a concerned vulnerable citizen, a few layman’s approaches.
Simple things daily- then…
Human rights and domestic freedoms. Privacy and its “invasion” the law and needed legislation vis-a vis “rights”.
All the above come into focus if and when we address measures to confront the gun-crime issues. Can’t some personal rights be briefly suspended in the interest of personal and national security? Without a state of emergency?
Consider me at the old, now burnt-down, Metropole cinema about 48 years ago: I attended the 8:30 pm “theatre” movies. Yes, I could only afford, in those sixties, to be in the Poor People’s Pit. Just as the last movie entered its final twenty minutes, management stopped the show and switched on bright lights!
A hastily-written sign on the screen informed that, in the interest of safety on Georgetown’s streets after midnight, the police wished to search patrons!
If you saw ice-picks, knives, screwdrivers, nails, masks, razors, two small cutlasses and such like on pit’s floor! What’s the lesson there?
Believe me, I can surrender my “right” to “privacy” to allow our police to do the following: to search at road blocks and cordons with more strategy than now employed; to intervene at parties, big public concerts and even well- to- do events to carry out personal searches; to intercept speed boats and ferry boats on water and at crossings and terminals to search to utilize GPS technology to profile villages and communities to pinpoint safe places, safe havens and points of entry and exit which afford getaways, all of these matters are in the interest of the search for guns. The bad guys must know that the police are being relentless and continuous. What?! Naughty police are involved? Involved in what?
Guyana Radio- the old days
Pardon me as I postpone this item to next Friday. Could I ever envisage that the radio spectrum would become so political? So provocative an issue as to cause dissension and contention?
Next week I’ll tell of local radio’s history. And my views on Mr Jagdeo’s acumen.
Ponder…
Noted an interesting letter by a Morris Wilson which urged the local Parliamentary Opposition to court “extra-parliamentary support from among Guyana’s Masses”. Must return to that advice. Civil Society must be empowered.
The bullets to the Head and Heart are fatal wounds to a “small” nation such as ours.
Next week: real change in West Indies Cricket now? Our cricket? Our football? Discuss.
Til next week!
(comments? allanafenty@yahoo.com)
